Chrome’s Adblocker Hits Today

Today, Google’s “Chrome will stop showing all ads on sites that repeatedly display these most disruptive ads after they’ve been flagged,” writes a Chrome VP on Tuesday. In other words, today’s the day that Chrome includes adblocking as a default option on the browser.

This development comes as Google declares mobile site speed will be a ranking factor in search — distinct from its previous declaration that mobile site optimization had to happen, which is already part of the algorithm. The second subhead below contains those details.

Chrome’s Default Adblocker

As for today’s news, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury says on Google’s blog The Keyword that “feedback has shown that a big source of frustration is annoying ads: video ads that play at full-blast or giant pop-ups where you can’t seem to find the exit icon. These ads are designed to be disruptive and often stand in the way of people using their browsers for their intended purpose — connecting them to content and information.”

Roy-Chowdhury acknowledges that some of affected sites will also house Google ads, which will impact the company’s revenue, but “your experience on the web is a higher priority than the money that these annoying ads may generate — even for us.” Still, Chrome’s adblocker will only be targeting disruptive ads, unlike other blanket-adblockers, he writes. So marketers acting in good faith won’t be affected.

The most intrusive ad experiences include prestitial ads (those full-page ads that block you from seeing the content on the page) and flashing animated ads.

High ad density can also be a problem, Bentzel says.

Violations are addressed in this way, the post says:

Sites are evaluated by examining a sample of pages from the site. Depending on how many violations of the Better Ads Standards are found, the site will be evaluated as having a status of Passing, Warning or Failing. The evaluation status of sites can be accessed via the Ad Experience Report API. Site owners can also see more detailed results, such as the specific violations of the Better Ads Standards that were found, via the Ad Experience Report in Google’s Search Console. From the report site, owners can also request that their site be re-reviewed after they have addressed the non-compliant ad experiences.

Who has the time and resources to actually investigate if Google is keeping their word on this? Sorry, but I am skeptical.

Chet_Dalzell

I wish we didn’t call this a Chrome Ad Blocker — it’s really an Annoying Format Filter or even a Better Ads Facilitator…. big difference. It is designed to enable less annoying ad formats, and in some cases more relevant, advertising experiences. It also eschews the nomenclature of a wholly economic-destroying activity of what real ad blockers do — steal ad-financed content and services on behalf of their users, while in many cases enriching the blocker. We may debate how and why the digital ecosystem “drove” some users to choose blockers — which is the impetus for Better Ads — but real ad blocking, as opposed to annoying ad format filtering, is theft, period. The “everything is free, something for nothing” mentality inevitably ends up against consumers’ collective interest, as well as the interests of a whole lot of other socially and politically important attributes of free and fair societies. OK, off my soap box, IMHO.

Nat Rev

I don’t believe anything Google or Facebook says. Anything. I use Chrome and gmail but I’d switch in a heartbeat if another browser met some simple needs. So far the competition doesn’t.

As far as ads go, I’ve been using AdBlocker Plus for a decade so my response to “Google adblocker” is, so what?